The present disclosure relates in general to evaluating the source of an actual or requested electronic communication through a network. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to methodologies, systems and computer program products for efficiently and effectively detecting and/or identifying a network communication that is from an imposter source.
The term “phishing” refers to the nefarious practice of using electronic communications to entice individuals to voluntarily disclose confidential information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details to a requester that, unknown to the individual, is masquerading as a trustworthy entity. In a typical scenario, phishing communications purport to be from legitimate sources such as popular social web sites, auction sites, banks, online payment processors or information technology (IT) administrators. Phishing communications can take a variety of forms. For example, phishing communications are often carried out by email spoofing or instant messaging in which email messages are created with a forged sender address and broadcast to a wide number of valid email addresses. The forged email may direct users to enter details at an imposter or fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate web site. It would be beneficial to provide the capability of detecting and/or identifying a network communication that is from an imposter source.